Treatment
by beeeinyourbonnet
Summary: After years of loneliness, Dr. Gold finally meets someone he likes.


The first of September saw this semester's new med students arriving for orientation at Storybrooke General, and subsequently saw Dr. Gold in the break room, where he was certainly not hiding. He was eating his sandwich from Granny's, and if he happened to have stashed more than one food item in the communal fridge so that he could come eat throughout the day, it was a coincidence.

There was a table of three nurses across the room, and when the group of new students came in for their lunch break—had he been hiding, which he was not, this would have been poor timing—they all congregated around them, sharing jokes and bits of wisdom. There were seven students this semester, five men and two women, and all but one crowded around the table next to the nurses, which only sat five. The last pulled a lunchbox out of the fridge, looked around, and came to sit next to him across the room.

"Are you a doctor?" she asked, and if she hadn't caught him unawares and with his Reuben between his teeth, he might have fled.

"What gave it away?" He gestured to his lab coat, and took a bite of his sandwich, getting sauer kraut all over his free hand.

"That was my lead-in to 'you're Doctor Gold, right? The neurologist?'" She pulled a yogurt and what looked like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of her lunchbox.

"Are you a grade school teacher?" He eyed her lunch—at least her yogurt was had granola instead of M&Ms or something else childish.

"I look forward to shadowing you next semester," she said, looking up from peeling the foil off her yogurt to smile at him. "I'm studying neurology as well."

"Don't get your hopes up too much, dear."

"I'm Belle French." She offered her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

Watching her face for signs of trickery, he wiped the vinegar off his hand and shook hers. "Don't speak too soon," he said.

"I never do."

* * *

He expected not to see Belle except in passing until she was shadowing him next semester. He did not examine the emotions associated with that, and chose to believe that he was just excited to have a student with initiative. The last time that had happened, it had ended in a regrettable disaster, but Belle French was not Regina Mills.

Belle did pass him on occasion, and when she did, she waved, but every once in awhile, their lunch breaks lined up, and they sat together in the corner table of the break room. She never had anything that couldn't be bought in bulk at the grocery—yogurt, ramen, peanut butter—unless it was leftovers, and even then, it was nothing special. He wanted to buy her lunch, but he didn't know how to bring it up. They weren't friends, not really, just colleagues who sat together in the break room. Sometimes, he helped her understand a complex medical procedure, and sometimes, she helped him with his crossword.

He didn't know anything about her life, and she didn't know anything about his, but it was better that way.

* * *

"If you hate socializing," Belle began one day, crunching into her carrots. She could be unbearably health-conscious sometimes. "Why do you eat in the break room?"

"They're repairing the fire damage in my office."

Belle laughed like she wasn't sure what else to do, carrot stick between her lips like an unlit cigar. "What happened?"

"It's best you don't know."

* * *

The first one in her group dropped out around Thanksgiving, after Dr. Whale could not save a woman who'd just given birth. He'd been callous afterward, and Belle had sat with him in the break room while no one else could bear to look at him, and then the next day, he was gone.

Belle didn't sit with him all week, and he was grateful, because all of the students had been plagued by long, philosophical talks. It always went like this after losing the first patient.

She went home for Thanksgiving, like everyone else, and Gold spent it at the hospital, as he always did. Without his son, he had no one to celebrate with, so he might as well save lives.

* * *

"Once," she said, slurping at a smoothie one of the other residents had given her, "I read in the paper that you had to operate on a Kennedy."

"That was a lie," he said.

"Oh?"

"It was a girl that a Kennedy impregnated, and they wanted it kept quiet."

Belle gasped, and his lips grinned of their own accord. "Should you be telling me this?"

He shrugged, keeping his gaze on his soup cup. "I trust you."

"What did you have to operate on?"

"That, my dear, is confidential. But I can tell you that her toes will never be the same."

* * *

In mid-December, the hospital was full of drunk college students needing their stomachs pumped after their post-finals partying. The med students got to help, and he saw Belle in the break room scrubbing at her hands with soap and a sponge on more than one occasion.

She stayed until Christmas Eve, and before she left, presented him with a cellophane bag full of Russian tea cookies. She had to run to catch her flight after that, so he ate them alone while drinking a cup of Darjeeling in the break room.

* * *

The new year brought with it a new rotation of med students, but Gold did not care this time. Instead, he was busy pulling strings so that Belle's group could shadow him first, rather than last. The numbers had thinned, and only three of the five boys remained. This helped his jealousy stay to a dull, ignorable roar.

Repairs on his office were finished, and he put a vase of fresh orchids on his desk to brighten it up. He and Belle could eat there, now, which would allow him to pretend that his jealousy had never existed.

He bought her lunch to celebrate. Sushi, because she'd confessed to missing it, and some loose leaf jasmine tea. They would discuss her holiday, and her holiday only, because his had been spent working, and then he would tell her that she would begin shadowing him tomorrow. She would be excited.

The other students arrived at ten to watch another birth. Belle was not among them. She must have overslept, or been assigned another task.

She did not show up for lunch. He looked for her in the break room, but her lunchbox wasn't in the fridge. She did not show up for his debriefing later, or his appointment the next day, or lunch again. Something must have happened. It must have been an emergency.

He should have gotten her phone number. He could get it from the records, but he didn't want to call her and alarm her. She'd think he was a creepy old man stalking her.

So he would wait.

* * *

Belle did not arrive all week. He gave his lessons in a monotone, and every door opening made him jump with anticipation. On January 15, someone informed him that she'd dropped out. He was given no explanation. He didn't need one. It didn't matter why—just that she had not seen fit to tell him. Who would?

There were only four now, and Gold could not wait for their time with him to be over.

* * *

Being a doctor had its perks, the main one being that he could put in 26-hour days without much complaint and then be too exhausted to dream by the time he went home to sleep. If he pushed himself hard enough, he didn't think about Belle. The days where he was exhausted enough to pass out in his office chair weren't frequent enough.

* * *

He hated everyone—his coworkers, the med students, his patients. He faked it for the patients, but he could not anywhere else, and no one could ask him to. He wanted to work in the children's ward—he always had—but no one would let him train for it now. He was too ornery, too mean. Besides, he was the best neurologist in New England. It would be a crime not to remain a neurologist.

The students did not get better at neurology as their time wore on, and his evaluations were scathing, at best, but soon he would be free for another few months, and his hate could dissipate a little.

* * *

In April, he decided that it was time to get over Belle. She wasn't even that special, and they'd never spent more than half an hour together. He threw out the wilted orchids, the bag she'd wrapped her cookies in, and all of his Darjeeling. He took the entire weekend off and went to see a ballet. He spent the rest of the time in his favorite armchair with a bottle of Lagavulin.

* * *

Dr. Whale had a scandal with a group of nurses, and all five women got transferred to different hospitals so that their careers wouldn't suffer. The staff and med students had to pick up the slack, until Dr. Gold had to step up and lean on the administration to hire replacements.

The hires were finalized in July, and after hearing about them, Gold was even more relieved that none of the nurses on his section of the staff had been affected by the scandal. Three twenty year olds, one mother of three, and an uncertified—he'd rather do the work himself.

Three of them started immediately, and Gold avoided them like the plague. When the other two started, he avoided them, too, preferring to let the med students show them around.

Then, one day, he walked by the break room, and Belle was sitting at their table eating a peanut butter sandwich.

* * *

He avoided her. How could he not? She disappeared without warning and came back as a nurse. A bit of snooping uncovered her as the uncertified—not the mother of three, thank God—but what did that indicate? Nothing, just that she wasn't a med student and wasn't a nurse. She was just a dropout with a job cleaning bedpans and catheters, which was apparently better than socializing with him.

* * *

He spent another month holed up in his office. Then, someone must have tipped Belle off that it was inhabitable, because she appeared in the doorway while he was taking the first bite of a pulled pork sandwich.

"Hi," she said.

"Hey." He set the sandwich down, but not before a cascade of pork and barbecue sauce fell out the back end over his fingers.

"I've been looking for you."

"I've been busy."

She looked down. "I'm sorry I left so abruptly."

"It's no matter."

"Do you want to have lunch?"

"I'm almost finished." He swallowed, though he hadn't taken a bite of anything. He couldn't face her. Not yet.

"Right." Her face twitched, and she looked at the floor even closer. "All right. Well, I just wanted to say hi."

"Hi."

"Hi." She turned around, hand on the doorknob. "Bye."

"Bye." It was better this way. She had already broken his heart once, and he'd barely even known her. He wouldn't let her do it again.

She pushed the door open and stepped out.

"Tomorrow?" he called, chest swelling like a balloon when she paused and turned around.

"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow. In here?"

"How about the break room?" Start somewhere familiar—that would be best. Keep it casual.

"Great. I'll see you there."

* * *

They sat in silence in their corner of the break room. Belle had a salad in a plastic container with boiled eggs for protein. It was not a lunch to keep a person going for a ten hour shift, but she had been working for a month, so she knew better than he did what she needed to eat.

"My dad died."

He choked on his wrap. It was the first thing either of them had said, other than 'hello.'

"Sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." She put a hand on his back, and he thought for a moment that he was having a heart attack. Belle had never touched him with purpose before.

"It's okay. I'm—I'm sorry to hear that."

"That's why I left. He was sick, and I needed to move home to take care of him. I didn't want to drop out, but there was no other way."

He'd been right all along—there was an emergency. He didn't know what this meant for all of the months he'd spent hating himself for driving her away, but he did know that his heart was throbbing against his ribcage like an angry wasp.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"Thank you." She smiled. "So, I'm back now, and the hospital is paying for me to get certified, which is great, because I'm in debt up to my eyeballs."

"Dropping out of med school does that."

"Right." She chuckled into her salad, but her face was pulled taut. "Yeah."

He cleared his throat. "Are you going to go back to school?"

She shook her head. "Can't afford it. Maybe when I pay back some of these loans, I can get accepted again, but I'm thinking maybe being a doctor wasn't my path."

"Oh?"

"Well, I always wanted to go to Africa or South America, but I think I can do that as a nurse, and I help so many more people here." She shook her head again. "It's unreal."

"Being a nurse does allow for more hands-on experience."

"It does. I think I'd like to work in the pediatric ward once I have my certification."

"A woman after my own heart."

Their eyes met, and it was finally like no time had passed. He had never been broken hearted, had never smashed a teacup against the corner of his desk.

"You want to work in the pediatric ward?"

"I do." He swallowed, forcing a nonchalant shrug. "Always have."

"You should."

"I'm a neurologist."

"A great one."

He nodded, taking another bite of his wrap. What could he say to that?

* * *

September meant that Greek life was kicking into gear, which meant more stomach pumping, more blood tests, more removing things from places they didn't belong. In the new group of med students, there was a bright young woman with blue eyes and brown curls. She tried to introduce herself to Belle, but Belle fled to the break room.

Gold found her there, shoving a handful of M&Ms from the vending machine into her mouth.

"Come have tea with me," he said, and when he put his hand on her back, Belle was no longer just the woman he ate lunch with.

* * *

He was a puppy. There was no other way to describe it. He wanted to hate himself for it, to have enough pride not to be at Belle's beck and call like a dog on a leash, but he liked being near Belle too much. Their lunches were no longer sporadic, not-quite-chance meetings. He asked her when her break was, and then took his at the same time.

They ate in his office, and he sometimes ordered food for her—but not too much, because it turned out that money was a touchy subject for Belle, and she wanted to be self-sufficient. Since she, in fact, was—taking care of a cancer patient was no easy feat—he had no problem restraining himself.

"I think that blonde woman studying to be an OB/GYN is going to have a nervous breakdown around Thanksgiving," she said one day, spearing a cherry tomato on her plastic fork. "She's got the crazy eyes."

"Hopefully, she'll just have a breakdown, and not drop out. I wouldn't want the man studying obstetrics anywhere near a pregnant woman."

"Amen."

* * *

As an employee, Belle was allowed to be part of the group of nuts who decorated the entire hospital for Halloween. He spent a week not having lunch with her because she was discussing ideas with her fellow mad people, and then they were hanging streamers and garlands and pumpkins and cartoonish ghosts. He escaped her attempts to get him to help by relying on a cane—very difficult to decorate without full use of both arms and legs.

She roped him into helping out with their pediatric project, though—getting sugar pumpkins for all the kids to decorate. A little bald girl scheduled to make a full recovery painted a pig onto her pumpkin, and presented it to Gold. He kept it on his desk, right next to the picture of his son.

* * *

Belle had back pain. She probably had leg pain and arm pain, but that wasn't as obvious to Gold as the way she winced whenever she turned her head, or bent too quickly. He wasn't surprised—a lot of people had back pain, especially when they were bending up and down all the time.

She tried to hide it, so he ignored it, even though it made his ankle twinge in sympathy. When lifting the laptop she carried from patient to patient in her left hand made tears spring to her eyes, he had had enough.

"You need to see a chiropractor," he said, snatching the laptop from her. He would walk her to her next patient, even if it meant being late to his.

"No, I don't." She shook her head, wincing in pain.

"This is ridiculous, even for someone as stubborn as you."

"No, it's not that." She reached behind her to rub at the juncture where her neck met her left shoulder.

"What is it, then?"

"I think you're the doctor I need to see."

* * *

She tried to pay him, but he insisted that he was just giving her his hypothetical professional opinion on the fact that she had pinched a nerve in her neck. She was sensitive when he touched her back, but refused to let him prescribe medication, so he wrote down a list of vitamins to find supplements for.

"Start drinking tonic water."

She made a face. "By itself?"

"I don't care. Have a glass a day. Mix it with gin if you feel so inclined."

"Maybe you should drink tonic water with me."

"Well, I'd most definitely have to mix it with gin."

"Are you asking me out for drinks?"

He started to apologize for giving her that impression, but she was biting her lip at him while the rest of her face strained against unreleased laughter.

"If you'd like me to be."

"I'll think about it after I find out how many vitamins you prescribed me."

* * *

He checked up on her back the next week and she claimed it felt better, but he suggested painkillers anyway. She refused to let him give her a shot of cortisone to relieve the pressure, since he refused to let her pay for it.

Someday, she would owe him a favor, and then she would have no choice but to let him cure her. All he had to do was wait, and he was good at waiting.

* * *

They both took Thanksgiving shifts, since neither of them had family. Belle brought a small turkey and mashed potatoes, and he brought a jar of gravy and vegetables, and they ate in his office while drinking gin and tonics.

"Should we have invited Dr. Whale?" she asked.

Gold's upper lip curled. "Absolutely not."

"He did just get dumped."

"I don't care."

She shook her head, but she was laughing. "You know, sometimes your empathy astounds me."

"You're not the first person to say that."

* * *

The blonde obstetrics student had her breakdown the Monday after Thanksgiving, but Belle was ready for it. The woman was even more confident by the time Belle was through with her, and Gold breathed a sigh of relief for all the women in New England who might have otherwise been subjected the male student.

* * *

Belle got certified and promoted on December tenth, and there was a small party for her in the break room. It seemed that the pediatricians she would be working with loved her. Gold stood in the back, not touching the cake he was offered.

* * *

What did one get for his more-than-casual work acquaintance for Christmas? Gold spent most of December puzzling over it. If he'd had his way, the cortisone shot would have been her present—so that she couldn't refuse it—but he knew she'd want something more special.

Special, but not expensive. From the heart, but not too inappropriate and weird. He was between a rock and a hard place with this gift. He'd always gotten his ex-wife perfume and expensive jewelry.

He could get her a gift card to the grocery, or take her out for a fancy dinner. He hadn't seen her outside of the hospital, though, and he wasn't ready. What if she didn't like him outside? It was not a risk he was willing to take.

* * *

The hospital holiday party was on a Thursday so that it wouldn't interfere with anyone's plans. Belle arrived in a red sweater dress and leggings, with heels that brought her to his chin.

"Hey." She looked pleased to see him when he appeared behind her, and he couldn't stop his smile.

"Hey."

"I have something for you." She hefted her purse to indicate it was inside it.

"I have something for you, too, but it's in my office."

"We should go, then." She took his arm when he nodded, and led him out of the break room, past all of the Christmas and Hannukah decorations, and into the dim seclusion of his office. When he switched the light on, her eyes fell to the box on her chair, big enough to fill the whole seat.

"Oh, that?" he said, before she could ask. "That's not for you, that's for the other woman I've been having lunch with. Lovely girl. Stubborn about a bit of nerve damage on her neck."

She pressed her lips together. "Oh, I see. This is for someone else, too." She pulled a larger box than he expected out of her purse. "A grumpy curmudgeon I've been eating with."

"Oh, a grumpy curmudgeon, hmm? Maybe you should give it to me instead. I hear curmudgeons are terrible company."

She handed the box over. "If you insist. Should I take this gift for your stubborn lady?"

"It's only fair if you do."

He indicated that she should unwrap first, so she turned to the task of peeling off the paper. Since the box was so big, he'd had to improvise by layering the paper, and every time she peeled a strip off, there was another pattern underneath.

"You don't wrap much, do you?" she asked.

He swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, "Not since my son died."

Her eyes first strayed to the photograph on his desk of a young boy, about twelve, smiling from ear to ear with his face smeared in chocolate and ice cream from the Mickey Mouse pop he was holding.

"I'm sorry," she said.

They'd both lost someone, and even ten years later, Belle was handling her loss better than he was handling his. "Thank you. Now, go on. Unwrap."

She made it down to the box, then had to work to un-tape the lid. "You were really concerned about this being opened, weren't you?"

"I tried to keep it secret, yes."

She lifted the lid, groaning at the tissue paper it revealed, but that was dealt with in seconds and then she was staring inside the box. "Is this—a globe?"

"Aye, it is." He stepped closer, eyeing her like she might slap him. "So that you can keep track of where you want to go."

She looked at him with glassy eyes, fingertips pressed to her mouth. "This is the best gift anyone's ever gotten me. Oh god, I feel like such a loser now. Go on, open yours."

He looked down at the box in his hand, and started to peel the wrapping off. It had only one layer, expertly wrapped with creased corners and even lines, and he pulled the box out without destroying the paper too much. When he lifted the lid, he was confronted with a mass of burgundy yarn.

"Is this a scarf?" He pulled it out, letting it unroll to the ground. There were a few snags, and he might have commented on them had it not occurred to him that they were there because this was handmade.

"Yes, and I'm sorry about the weird fringe length and all the snags—I didn't have time to fix them. I work a lot."

He felt like a sticky hard candy was stuck in his throat, and all he could do was stare at the scratchy yarn between his fingers. Vaguely, he noticed that there was another cellophane bag of cookies underneath, but she had made those for everyone. She had made this for him.

Without a word, he draped it over his neck. "How do I look?"

"Cozy." She smiled. "The cookies, by the way, are _speculaas_. I was experimenting. Oh, and some gingerbread in case you don't like those."

"Wonderful." He didn't know what a _speculaas_ was, but he wasn't about to say so. He had the internet.

She stepped up to him, adjusting his scarf until it was draped evenly over both shoulders. "There. Now it won't fall off."

"You can keep the globe here, if you want," he blurted. "That way—you'll always be reminded of your dreams—at work." It was a weak excuse, but Belle's face lit up anyway.

"Really? Oh, that's fantastic! How about that corner?"

"Sure. Any corner you'd like."

The corners of her eyes crinkled in a smile, and she'd stretched up so that her arms could wind around his neck. She was surprisingly strong for such a tiny thing with nerve damage, and he found himself having trouble getting air into his lungs—but maybe that was because her body was pressed to his, and he had his arms full of her.

"Thank you, Robert."

"Thank _you_, Belle."

She lifted her head away from him, keeping her arms around his neck, and just looked at him. He couldn't remember how to do anything with his face, so he just watched her, feeling like flames were eating at his edges and melting him into the air around them.

Then, his lips were brushing hers, so soft at first that he didn't realize he had moved, but then her hands were on his cheeks and their lips were moving together, and he tasted ginger ale and onion dip, and nothing had ever been so sweet.

* * *

They didn't talk about the kiss. He would not bring it up unless Belle did, because it was the best thing that had happened to him in a decade, and he didn't want to damage that memory.

The atmosphere shifted. Belle touched him more—brushing his arm, leaning over his shoulder, squeezing his hand. On Christmas day, they both worked fifteen hour shifts, and when she started having troubles carrying her laptop, she confessed to forgetting her vitamins.

He sat her down and force-fed her tonic water, and she lowered her scrubs over her shoulder so that he could take a look at the bare skin of her back. It was red and blotchy, so he pressed his cool fingers to it, eliciting sighs from Belle each time he did.

Not thinking, he pressed his lips to her skin. They were still for a moment, and then she sighed again.

* * *

The vitamins helped again, but after the Christmas fiasco, Belle was more amenable to his suggestion of cortisone. He would have liked to perform surgery to decompress the nerve, but he wouldn't push his luck. The cortisone, at least, would help, and then she could get physical therapy. Once he prescribed it, it would be covered under her health insurance.

"This might hurt," he said, swabbing her bare shoulder with alcohol. A selfish part of him wanted to have to do this often so that he could always feel her skin beneath his calloused fingertips.

"I trust you."

"Just relax your shoulder." He waited for her muscles to sag, and then she hissed in pain and it was all over.

"Thanks for the warning," she said, waiting for him to tape a piece of cotton to the wound.

"It might be sore for a few days." He ran his fingers along her shoulder, wanting to kiss it again, but afraid to push his luck.

"I think I can handle that."

He helped her lift her sleeves back to her shoulders, and then she was buttoning her scrubs back up and he could no longer excuse his touch as being necessary.

"Thank you." She slid off the examination table and turned to face him. "I really appreciate this."

"It's not a problem."

She took a few steps closer to him, and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Then, when he was left speechless, she pressed one to his lips, and then left for the day.

* * *

They never mentioned the kissing, but it was like they'd opened a floodgate. Any time they were assured of their aloneness, Belle would press gentle lips to his, and he would be lost. Usually, they stood, but sometimes, Belle would sit on his desk and wrap her legs around his waist, letting him lean on her for support. Once, when someone had stolen her chair at his desk, she perched on his knees, twisting around to kiss him.

He never did anything impolite with his hands, and neither did she. The most he allowed himself to do was let his palms drift up her back, under the hem of her shirt, staying near her hips.

There were things he wanted to do other than kissing, like just holding onto her cheeks and looking at her for long minutes until his heart was ready to burst, and feeding each other from their own forks, and stroking her hair just to feel it between his fingers.

But he didn't want to ruin this amazing thing, so he never pushed. If he could just spend forever kissing Belle, he would have no reason to complain.

* * *

At the beginning of February, the young brunette intern won an award for excellence and creativity in her field of research, and Gold found Belle wedged into a corner, mauling a Snickers bar. Before he could speak, she had dragged him by the tie into a closet, and pressed him against the door with her lips.

"Belle—"

"Hold me."

So he did, crushing them together and tasting caramel on her tongue.

* * *

Broom closets became a staple in their routine. Sometimes, she'd surprise him by opening a door to his left and grabbing him by the coat. Other times, he'd begin a pretentious conversation only to guide her into one.

"That actually sounded important, though," she said, sagging against him as he nibbled her ear.

"It wasn't."

"But did the quartet ever get the kidney transplant?"

"It wasn't a kidney transplant they needed."

"What?"

He thrust the tip of his tongue into her ear and she shuddered. "Think about it."

Except, he certainly wasn't going to let her do that.

* * *

He found her sitting at a table in the break room, head to head with one of the twenty year old nurses—possibly twenty-one now, but he wasn't keeping tabs. She was nodding along as the woman spoke in halting sentences, hand gripping a Styrofoam cup.

"You need to prioritize, Ashley. You can't control everything, but knowing what you can control will help you feel more in charge of your own life."

He ducked out of the break room as Ashley bobbed her head in agreement. He couldn't begrudge the world its opportunity to be fixed by Belle, not when she'd already done so much to fix him.

* * *

People clamored for Belle's advice once they saw how much improved Ashley was. It was like no one had ever talked to anyone about their problems before, which made Belle and her clever advice a hot commodity. He would have seethed with jealousy—sometimes, she ate lunch with these people—but she always complained about how everyone was treating her like a rag doll.

"Maybe I should get paid to listen to people's problems. Then they wouldn't be interrupting my time with you."

"It's a thought," he agreed.

* * *

March brought with it the first traces of almost-warm weather, but Gold still wore the scarf Belle had made him wherever he went. He wanted to take her outside and stroll amongst the melting snow and shy foliage, but all he could do was remark on it when they deigned to open the blinds in his office.

"Robert," she said one day, perching on the edge of his desk while he sat.

"Mm?"

"I'm going to have to spend my lunch breaks alone for a week or so, but I don't want you to be worried, okay?"

"Why would I worry?" She knew him too well.

"No reason. I just thought I'd cover all of my bases."

* * *

He still worried. He allowed her use of his office so that no one could bother her, promising to take breaks at the end of hers so that they'd not be tempted to while their half hour away with lips and words. He craved to know what she was doing, how it would affect things, what it would mean for him, but he respected her privacy. He knew that he could find out if he tried—digging up information was a specialty of his—but he refused to tempt himself.

He would find out soon enough.

* * *

After two weeks, she was back, and nothing had changed. He was relieved. Last time a woman had spent time alone writing things he couldn't see, he'd ended up with divorce papers. Her crowd of admirers seemed to have forgotten the fad of having her solve their problems, which meant that he got her to himself.

He was not going to complain.

* * *

Belle sat him down near the end of April and handed him a cup of strong tea with honey. She was sipping orange juice and tonic water out of a reusable straw, and he was proud of her for keeping up.

"I have something to tell you." She looked excited, so he tried not to let the stone that was filling his belly consume him.

"What is it?"

"I'm going back to school."

"Well, that's great. Will you be starting back up with your residency?"

"No." She shook her head, and he was about to offer to call the school and have a few words, but she continued. "I'm not going back to med school."

He frowned. "What?" He didn't understand. If she wasn't going back to medical school, that meant she was leaving. Forever.

"I'm going back for my masters in psychology. Actually, it's a combined masters and doctorate program. I've got a teaching assistantship and everything."

"Oh." He felt like she'd pricked his heart with a needle and let all the air out of it. "Congratulations."

"This means I'll only be taking either morning shifts or evening shifts, possibly only weekend shifts. But I'm cutting my hours down significantly."

His eyes focused, the fact that she wasn't leaving entirely helping him feel more grounded. "So you're going here, then?"

"Of course. My life is here." She bit her lip, and looked down at her hands. "You're here."

_Him_. _He_ was there. "I am."

"And since—since we won't be seeing each other much at work, I thought maybe we could start to see each other—outside of work."

"Outside?" he echoed.

"Yes. I'd—I'd very much like to go on a real date with you, and maybe kiss somewhere that isn't locked down like a bomb shelter."

He couldn't breathe. Maybe that was why he was starting to feel lightheaded. "A real date?" What were words? He certainly couldn't form new ones.

"Yes." She looked down again. "If you'd like, that is. Maybe I could—I could make dinner."

She was inviting him into her home. Her home. The place where she lived. And slept.

"I would like." He pulled himself out of his chair, closing the distance between them and hardly feeling her knees against his thighs because most of his body was numb and tingly. "I would like very much."

"Good."

He didn't know what he had done to inspire such wonder in her eyes, but he knew that he looked much the same, and when he kissed her this time, neither of them bothered to draw the blinds.


End file.
